From the Gulf, tales of destruction, not defeat

Jim Rider had seen some of the same things before. After the tsunami, Jim and WSBT-TV's Dustin Grove went to Sri Lanka to report on local connections to the relief effort. They brought back some powerful stories, photos and footage. Jim has just returned from another trip, this one to Mississippi's Gulf Coast, to report on how residents are bearing up four months after Hurricane Katrina. Some of the images he recorded were eerily similar to those he photographed last January. The remaining foliage was different, of course, and the remaining buildings and houses were "luxurious" compared with the thatched huts and simple brick buildings that lay in the path of the tsunami in Sri Lanka. "It was very similar," Jim said. "Total devastation. What hit the gulf was like a hurricane and a tsunami." He was accompanied on the six-day trip last week by Staff Writer Joseph Dits and WSBT Videographer DeMarco Brown. The team flew into New Orleans, a city still struggling with its destiny. As they drove eastward in their rented SUV, they beheld a scene that they will not soon forget. It was haunting, Jim said, "seeing a major city's skyline and realizing that nobody was in those buildings." The story they were after, though, was across the border in Mississippi, which actually had endured the harshest blows of the storm. They planned to roam 70 or so miles of Mississippi coast between Louisiana and Alabama and present us with an overview. Instead, they focused on the area around St. Louis Bay. The sights and the stories there offered a microcosm of what was going on in all three states hit by the disaster. The journalists were amazed at the devastation that remained. "One subdivision after another totally obliterated -- that was mind-boggling," Jim said. Not everyone they met was upbeat, but the courage and the optimism of most residents in what would seem to be a bleak holiday season was also astounding. Our nation tends to care about things very much -- for a while. Most of us -- led, certainly, by the media -- have short attention spans, even when it comes to problems as wide and deep as Katrina's devastation. That's what led Charles Pittman, vice president for newspapers at our parent company, Schurz Communications Inc., to suggest that we take another look as the holiday season begins. If in the back of your mind you assume that the problem down there has pretty much been solved, the reports that begin in Sunday's Tribune and at 6 p.m. Sunday on WSBT-TV will quickly convince you that is not so. Like those in New Orleans, people in southern Mississippi still are hurting, and still need our help. "It really was just four months ago," DeMarco said. "Everybody we saw was upbeat. I think they'll definitely rebuild." But as you'll see in our reports, the future is, to say the least, still cloudy. Jim said, "The saddest thing about this is, as people rebuild, they may be going through the same thing again in a few months."